


lay me gently in the cold dark earth

by spartans



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Chance Meetings, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spartans/pseuds/spartans
Summary: A chance encounter.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 22
Kudos: 31





	lay me gently in the cold dark earth

**Author's Note:**

> cw: smoking, implied sexual content

  
  
  
  


It is in the dark, cozy corner of some hole-in-the-wall pub that they meet again.

Shinsuke comes here occasionally. Rarely does he indulge in a drink, but it’s nice, catching up with his fellow townsfolk like this. The air is always warm with a sense of comradery and the faces are always familiar. Older couples, who call Shinsuke a ‘dashing young man’ and flash him toothy smiles. Fellow farmers, who pat his back and share with him their laughter. Friends, new and old.

Tonight, however, a stranger steps inside.

A man—around Shinsuke’s age, though clearly several inches shorter—pushes his way through the door. He tugs off the hood of his raincoat and his gaze, by some chance, finds Shinsuke’s.

Just paces away, beneath the dim glow of bar light, the man’s eyes glitter. He has a kind face, Shinsuke notes. Boyish, perhaps, but kind, and achingly familiar.

“I know ya,” Shinsuke finds himself saying. “Don’t I?”

The man takes the empty seat beside Shinsuke without any sort of hesitation. He rests his arms on the counter before flashing him an inquisitive glance.

“Do you?” he asks, humored.

Shinsuke nods. “I know ya,” he repeats.

“Okay,” is all the man says in response. There is a tilt of mischief to the smile he dons. “Buy me a drink, then.”

Shinsuke feels the corners of his lips twitch. “Deal.”

  
  
  
  


Shinsuke strains the confines of memory, turns time over and over again in his bare hands until he finally finds him. There, in that high-vaulted gymnasium. There, on that court, tenacious and bristling with electricity. Something powerful. A challenger. A victor.

And now he’s here.

  
  
  
  


His name, Shinsuke learns, is Nishinoya. He has just returned from an expedition up the West Coast of the United States and is now residing at a sister’s place down in Kobe until he takes off again in ten days’ time. Italy, he tells Shinsuke, is where he’s headed next. Where the coastlines are painted every color imaginable and columns brush the sky.

(Shinsuke has never been to the United States. He has never been to Italy. Regardless, he listens with intent and finds himself strangely captivated by the way this man’s eyes light up as he shares his story.)

“You know,” he says at one point, over his glass, “when we played you guys back in high school, I thought you were...scary.”

Shinsuke can’t help but smile. “Scary, huh?”

Nishinoya waves his hand dismissively. “No, no, I’m just surprised, I guess.” He hesitates, then raises an eyebrow. “I mean, you seriously don’t think anything I just told you is ridiculous?”

Shinsuke looks deep into Nishinoya’s eyes, searching his gaze. For what, specifically, he doesn’t know. Not quite yet.

After a moment, though, he nods. “I think it’s admirable, actually. Choosin’ to see the world.”

Nishinoya blinks. “Admirable. Yeah, alright, I guess it kinda is.” He takes another sip of his drink before glancing back at Shinsuke. “What do you do?”

“I work in the fields,” Shinsuke replies. “It’s nothin’ interesting, compared to all the travelin’ ya do, but I don’t need it to be. It’s good work.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Nishinoya says, nodding. Absentmindedly, he taps his fingers against the wooden counter. “You strike me as the kind of guy who would say those sorts of things.”

Shinsuke just chuckles.

“Why Italy?”

“Haven’t been there yet,” Nishinoya responds with a good-natured shrug. “I think I’d like to go out to sea for a bit.” Another mischievous sort of grin stretches across his face. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll sail so far, I’ll fall right off the edge of the earth.”

Shinsuke tries to picture it. Sea, green and glittering under the sun, spanning into the horizon. Into forever.

“Wouldn’t that be somethin,’” Shinsuke murmurs.

Nishinoya nods. “I always manage to surprise myself, no matter where I end up. I always find something special.”

And _there_ , in his eyes, is that unnameable something that Shinsuke longs to explore.

Some would perhaps call it fate. The man before him, after all, is so unlike anyone Shinsuke has ever met. A traveler, a nomad. A man of his own creation who challenges the world and makes it his own. His body is not just flesh and blood. It is a vessel.

Without much of a warning, Shinsuke rises from his seat. Nishinoya watches him, eyes still glittering.

Shinsuke offers him a hand. “Are ya comin’?”

Nishinoya glances at Shinsuke’s hand for a moment before smiling. “I’m glad you asked.”

His palm is warm and calloused, just like Shinsuke’s.

  
  
  
  


They end up on Shinsuke’s front porch. Rain, cold and sweet, patters onto stone steps.

There’s something about Nishinoya’s presence beside him that just feels _good_. Invigorating. He’s enigmatic, in a sense, a puzzle that Shinsuke itches to reconstruct. As rain spills down from the sky above, he imagines cradling each and every piece in the palm of his hand. Wonders what it might be like to learn the feel of him, the shape of him.

Instead, Shinsuke simply glances at Nishinoya with the eyes of an artist keen on capturing the scape of a moment. He studies the sharp curve of his jaw, the raindrops reflected in the dark of his eyes. The dip of a collarbone peeking out beneath the loose neckline of his t-shirt. Smoke from a cigarette curls around him, painting him gray.

As if he feels the weight of his gaze, Nishinoya turns his cheek and casts a curious glance back at Shinsuke. Their eyes lock, and a bolt of sweet electricity crackles inside Shinsuke’s chest.

Somebody else might be embarrassed, caught staring like a teenager with a crush, but Shinsuke feels nothing of the sort. He simply raises an eyebrow and rests his chin in the palm of his hand.

_(I know you.)_

Nishinoya grins back and takes another drag from his cigarette. Smoke billows around him, swirling into the darkness.

A moment elapses, nothing but breath. Then:

“I remember your banner.”

Shinsuke feels amusement─warm and light─bubble in his chest. “Ya mean from high school?” He chuckles softly. “It’s been a while. Impressive memory ya got there.”

“Ironic, huh? _Who needs memories_.” Nishinoya lets out a snort of laughter as he taps the ash away from the butt of his cigarette. “I thought that was stupid, to be honest.”

Shinsuke allows himself to lean closer, just a fraction of an inch. “In what way?”

“In a lot of ways,” Nishinoya responds, utterly unabashed. “I mean, aren’t my memories what makes me _me?_ The people I’ve met, the places I’ve been…. What’s the point, if I just go ahead and forget it all?”

He pauses thoughtfully for a moment and stares into the dark, rain-swollen sky. Another drag of the cigarette. The smoke he exhales is thick against the evening’s chill, and Shinsuke leans even further into its warmth─ _his_ warmth.

Nishinoya shrugs before continuing. “But I dunno. Maybe it’s not so much about forgetting, but rather the fact that you always have to keep moving forward.

“I got one shot at this life, and I wanna make sure I do it _right_ , you know? I don’t have to go out with a bang or anything, but at the end of it all, if I can just look back and think, _ah, you did good, Yuu. You did pretty damn good._ If I can do that, then...then I think I’ll be alright.”

He glances back at Shinsuke, brows knit. “Does all that make sense?”

(Shinsuke feels it again. Something sweet, electric, unnamable.)

Instead of speaking, he reaches for Nishinoya’s hand, softly wrapping his fingers around a tanned wrist. Slowly, as though lost in a rhythm of his own, he brings it to his lips, planting a gentle kiss on the curve of Nishinoya’s palm.

“It does,” he whispers. “It does make sense.”

And Nishinoya closes what little distance is left between them. Their lips lock, gliding against each other with smooth, languid motions. He tastes of smoke and salt.

Shinsuke turns over his own bare earth and allows the tide to wash over him.

  
  
  
  


“Tell me about the places ya’ve been,” Shinsuke breathes. He resists the urge to shiver as the pad of a thumb tenderly strokes his cheek. “I wanna hear it all.”

Nishinoya’s smile is slight, knowing. He gives a short nod in response before leaning in once more. Beneath the rain, beneath the night, Shinsuke leans in, too, and finds something sacred.

Color and heat bloom against his tongue and the world becomes _this_. Just this, only this.

  
  
  
  


The stone walls of Yosemite. Mountains that carve the land into two. Rainforests, thick with life. Jagged, snowcapped peaks that brush the sky. Misty rain slicking cobbled streets. Ocean, gray and cold, that stretches as far as the eye can see. Nishinoya scrapes patterns into Shinsuke’s shoulder blades, breathes stories against the smooth skin of his inner thigh. He paints a picture with words and Shinsuke surrenders himself to the artist’s touch.

_You should be a stranger, in every sense of the word_ , _but I know you. I feel you. I want you, too._

And so Shinsuke begins to create a map of his own, carefully charting the body beneath him. The veins and sinew of a forearm. The column of a throat. The smooth dip of a palm, cupped like a petal. He takes in every shape.

Two men, two _vessels_ , paths intertwined beneath night’s shadow. An odyssey of body and being.

  
  
  
  


Later, as they lie in the dark, Nishinoya lets out a soft laugh.

“Funny, isn’t it?”

Shinsuke continues to brush a hand through Nishinoya’s dark locks, his hair surprisingly thick between each finger. Another piece of this man to commit to memory.

“What is?” he asks.

“Just, the odds of this happening.” Nishinoya’s voice seems to float up into the night, warm and buoyant. “I mean, the odds of _anything_ happening, really, but especially this. I’m alive. You’re alive. We barely met, just once, and even that’s pretty miraculous. And yet…”

Nishinoya’s fingers trace circles into Shinsuke’s hip. Beneath his gentle touch, Shinsuke feels like a piece of the world laid bare. Raw earth. Stone. Sea. He does not stop to think of what tomorrow will bring; rather, he simply closes his eyes and soaks in the warmth of bare skin and body pressed against his own.

“And yet,” Shinsuke whispers, “we just so happened to meet again.”

“Yeah.” Even in the dark, he can sense the smile on Nishinoya’s face. “We did.”

  
  
  
  


Shinsuke sleeps soundly, deeply, and in his dreams, he sees his grandmother’s hands and sunlit country roads and husks of rice. Calm envelops him like the gentle pull of a tide, each wave like a breath beside him.

_I know you_. _This time, I won’t forget you.  
_

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> sooooooooo.... KITANOYA??? YEAH???? HGFHJKA
> 
> in terms of writing, this was a pretty experimental piece for me, so leave a comment or let me know your thoughts on [ twitter](https://twitter.com/kawashiras) :)


End file.
